by Julie Smith
Feeling disoriented, almost dizzy, she went out to get a sandwich, which she consumed without tasting, thinking of the way Justin Arceneaux's bones pushed at his skin.
6
Treme was a black neighborhood, poor but at least not one of the ancient, pathetic, falling-down housing projects that breed crime like roaches in New Orleans. Most murders these days were in the projects. Many cases—Skip thought most, but maybe it just seemed that way—involved juveniles who didn't care whether they lived or died. She had known thirteen-year-old crack dealers who had to hide their stashes from their mothers—and not because they feared punishment.
Treme was itself falling down in places, but it still had dignity; its residents didn't have the beaten-down feel of people from the projects, still seemed to take joy in life. The Municipal Auditorium was here, historically the site of the two biggest Mardi Gras balls and now the site of the city's temporary casino.
The auditorium was on the edge of the neighborhood, just across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, and the real estate agents all predicted the casino would vastly alter the character of the Quarter near Rampart. It already had, to some extent. Even without it, merely in anticipation, property values had shot through the roof. A healthy Hollywood community had settled in, and almost none of the old Creole town houses were still on the market, having been snapped up by investors and speculators. On one side of the street prosperity had already arrived.
But no one thought the Treme would change. Broken windows were common here. Paint peeled. Wood rotted. Formosan termites chewed.
On another case, Skip had met a prostitute who lived in the French Quarter at the time, had since moved to the Iberville Project to be with a man, and now lived in Treme. She was a sometime informant; though, if the truth were told, she didn't really know much.
But she had a daughter, and Skip felt sorry for her, gave her little cash gifts now and then. She hadn't heard from her in six or eight months, had simply one day found a note with the prostitute's new address on her desk—Jeweldean kept in touch. She might not know how to find Delavon the dealer, but she was a perfectly good place to start.
Skip found her building, a once-proud Italianate town house that didn't look too bad now—a ten-thousand-dollar paint job, a few little repairs, and new plumbing would probably have made it close to livable.
She rang the bell and a woman came out on the balcony.
"Who's down there?"
"Hey, Jeweldean. It's Skip Langdon."
"Langdon. What you want, girl?"
"Let me in, would you?" Skip was starting to feel conspicuous—as if she had on one of those jackets with Ponca in two-foot yellow letters on the back.
Jeweldean's little girl was lying on the living room sofa, watching television, covered with a cotton blanket and looking far too sad for a child not yet in school. Skip hadn't actually met her before, her dealings with Jeweldean usually taking place on the phone or after the girl was asleep.
"This is Tynette," Jeweldean said. "Say hello, baby."
The child complied, seeming barely able to get the word out.
"Le's go in the kitchen." When they were out of earshot, she said, "We went over by my mama's for Easter and Tynette got shot."
"Shot? That little girl?" Skip knew it happened all the time, but this girl was so small it shocked her—small and the child of someone she knew.
"We moved out of the projects 'cause of all that mess, but we had to go see my mama. She live over in St. Thomas"—another project—"and Tynette was playin' jump-rope. The shootin' started and she didn't know what to do. The other kids run away, but Tynette too scared. Poor little baby, you should have seen her lyin' in the courtyard, still wearin' her Easter dress, blood all over that pretty yellow skirt, on her white shoes, little legs and everything. Her grandrnama bought her that dress." Jeweldean's face was stoic, her voice steady.
Her life is so different from mine. She's been living with this for so long, she can't even cry anymore.
"How badly was she hurt?"
"Bad." Jeweldean nodded, as if trying to convince herself. "Pretty bad. She's gon' be okay though." She nodded some more. "She can walk, and tha's more than my cousin's baby can. He was shot when he was twelve years old; he seventeen now and he ain' never walked another step. Tynette can walk. She be fine."
"How do you get her to the doctor?"
"Biggie take us sometime. Man I been seein'. We manage." She flung her head back, proud; not wanting to say more. Holding something back.
But that was what Skip wanted. It gave her an opening. "You might need to take a taxi sometime," she said, and pulled a couple of twenties out of her purse, half of what she had at the moment. "Better be prepared."
"I sure do thank you," Jeweldean said.
Skip thought she heard a slight sigh behind the words, which came out low and slow, not the way Jeweldean talked at all. She was embarrassed, which in turn embarrassed Skip. "I need some information. "
"I thought maybe you did."
"But the money's not for that. That's just for Tynette."
Jeweldean looked unbelieving, but expectant.
"Is there any heroin around?"
"Well, I sure don't know. Why you think I'd know?"
"You know a guy named Delavon?"
Jeweldean's pupils dilated. "Oh, Delavon. Well, if anybody'd have any, it'd be him."
"Where can I find him?"
"You crazy, girl? You go mess with Delavon, you get yourself killed."
"Dangerous character, huh?"
"He as soon cut you up as say hello."
Skip shrugged. "I'll chance it. I've got to ask him something."
"Ax him? Oh, ax him. Honey, you don't ax Delavon. Delavon ax you. He like a king, you know? He don' answer to nobody."
"Well, I'll be sure to say ‘your majesty. "
For some reason, Jeweldean got tickled. "Girl, girl. You're somethin' else, you know that?"
Oh, can it. I'm a cop. She waited for the giggles to subside.
"You ser'ous about this?" said Jeweldean.
Skip nodded.
"Well, maybe Biggie do somethin'." She paused hardly a second and hollered, "Biggie! Biggie, come on out."
In a moment, a wiry little dude snaked out of the hallway, someone whose nickname was clearly ironic. He was about five-feet-six and may have weighed 13o pounds with his shoes on. He wore running shorts and matching tank top, in black and violet. His athletic shoes were open, with their tongues hanging out, laces dragging.
"Biggie, this Detective Langdon; Ms. Skip Langdon. You know her?"
He nodded. "I heard about you." He meant from Jeweldean.
"She need to find Delavon."
"Delavon! You don't want to mess with no Delavon."
"Sho' she does," said Jeweldean. "And you gon' help her find him. And you gon' stay with her, make sure she all right." She turned to Skip and held out her hand. "But you give the money to me."
She held out her hand for it. But Skip said, "I don't think we should do it that way. It's too dangerous for Biggie."
Biggie cocked his head. "You ain' worried 'bout me. You white police."
Jeweldean raised a hand as if to hit him. "Biggie! Don't you talk that way to her."
Skip shrugged. "Jeweldean says he'd as soon cut you up as say hello."
Biggie was nodding to himself, tiny little nods, sizing her up. Finally, he said, "I'm gon' make a phone call, see if we can work it."
Ten minutes later Skip and Biggie were outside, walking down the street, looking fairly conspicuous, a six-foot white female, dressed for business, and a kid-sized black dude, now in a pair of baggy pants, but still wearing the tank top, cool as you please. Almost immediately Skip heard gunfire—two shots, that was all. She jerked her head around; it had come from a falling-down brick apartment building from which screams were now emanating. Automatically she crouched, reaching for her radio. She called in a 1o-28 for emergency clearance and quickly gave the location of th
e gunshots. "Stay here," she said to Biggie, and broke into a run.
"Hey!" He sounded outraged. "You can't go in there. Hey!" He ran after her and grabbed her arm. "You crazy, you know that? Hey, white po-lice, you crazy!"
He wouldn't have grabbed her if she'd been a man, she was pretty sure of it. She shook him off and kept running, uncertain whether to bang on the door or slither to the side and try for the back. But the problem was solved when a kid about seven came running out the door, and she caught it before it closed. She raced up the first flight of stairs, hearing commotion just above her.
She reached the second landing, gun drawn, to find a young man, about seventeen probably, down and bleeding, people gathered around, someone working on his leg.
"Police! Who shot him?"
Silence.
She sighed, lowered her gun, and once again delved in her purse for her radio.
A half-dozen cars converged in minutes, with lots of officers to deploy, but she had no description of the shooter. He was just "some dude" that, oddly enough, no one had seen and no one knew. It was an hour before she had the scene cleaned up, and when she emerged from the building, she harbored a dim, distant hope that Biggie would still be waiting for her.
But of course he wasn't. Nobody was on the street except some gangster leaning against a fire hydrant.
There was nothing to do but go back to Jeweldean's and start over. She waved good-bye to the driver as the last police car left. The leaner caught her eye. "I hear you lookin' for Delavon."
"Yeah. I am."
"I take you to him."
No way she was going off with a strange man without backup.
"But you gotta be blindfolded," the man said. She was struggling not to laugh when she felt her elbows grabbed, her purse ripped off her shoulder. She was cursing herself for an idiot, getting her purse snatched like some tourist, when someone slipped a blindfold over her eyes. She was being held tightly now, unable to kick or struggle, and she realized that it had taken at least four strong men to immobilize her.
The three she never saw had been soundless. There wasn't a thing she could have done.
Somehow, the knowledge that she hadn't done anything wrong, that her predicament wasn't her fault, calmed her. Curiously, they hadn't gagged her. And why should they? If the spectacle of a blindfolded woman being dragged down the street didn't elicit anyone's sympathy, cries for help weren't going to either.
"Where are we going?" she said.
"You be quiet now," someone answered. She thought she might as well.
They put her in a car, in the backseat, one on either side of her, each holding an arm. The air was thick with the smell of sweat. And fear. Hers.
Her legs were free, but she couldn't see the point of struggling now; at the other end was soon enough.
They drove for a long time, and she talked to herself, told herself silent stories about curious ways to get to interviews—anything to avoid thinking like a victim.
When they stopped, someone said, "We at Delavon's. You be quiet now."
The psyching-up had worked—she had an odd feeling, almost of trust. This thing was so preposterous she felt it had to be merely a show of force, a posturing and flexing of muscles; that they wouldn't harm her.
She heard a metal door clang, and they walked her up two flights of metal steps. When they opened another door and took her blindfold off, it was as if she'd come by magic carpet, so exotic was the scene.
She had thought she was in one of the projects or maybe one of the scruffy apartment complexes that dotted certain areas, New Orleans East in particular. They were nasty slums on streets with names like Parc Brittany or Poplar Lane; brick fourplexes, some of them, some made out of wood, with porch roofs falling off, everything falling off.
But she was in a room too big for a place like that, unless someone had knocked a few walls down. And the furnishings were wrong. There were Oriental rugs everywhere, good ones, she thought, though she couldn't be sure, overlapping so that every inch of floor was covered. The walls were hung with fabric—a heavy, dark brocade with plenty of gold in it. A different fabric covered the ceiling in poufs, the way kids like to hang parachutes—something shiny, a taffeta perhaps, in deep burgundy woven with gold.
There were no windows that Skip could see—presumably they had been covered as well.
Near the back of the room was a sort of raised platform, on which a large chair had been mounted. The wall fabric, the dark brocade, had been draped over platform and chair. A man sat on the chair, a smallish, wiry black man who exuded energy as exuberantly as a stage actor. He had on a skullcap, loose-fitting shirt, and harem pants of gold-woven taffeta, a lot like the ceiling fabric, except that it was purple, yellow, and bronze.
Continuing the harem motif, no fewer than three sinuous young women lounged on the floor, all black, all sporting long, Egyptian-style ponytails, and all wearing halters and harem pants, clearly run up by the same mad designer who'd contrived the man's outfit.
Skip would have laughed if she hadn't been so busy trying to keep her jaw from dropping. And if there hadn't been something sad about it all.
She couldn't shake the feeling that if she pulled up the gorgeous carpets, she'd find a plywood floor, maybe covered with linoleum. That if she looked in the women's eyes, she'd see despair.
That if she ripped down the window coverings, she'd look out on buildings so poorly constructed the gutters, the roofs, anything that wasn't part of a wall would be hanging by a thread; or perhaps she'd see gorgeous old Greek revival buildings, now shells, like the ones in Central City along Baronne and Carondelet, deserted, their windows boarded up.
"You be the tall one," said the man. "I been hearin' 'bout you."
"I guess you be Delavon."
"Don't you mess with me." He brought a hand down flat against the arm of his chair. Because of the padding, it didn't make much noise, but perhaps it wasn't meant to intimidate. Skip read it as a simple loss of temper.
"You know how I got here." She couldn't bring herself to say the word kidnap. "Who's messing with who?"
Delavon sat up on his makeshift throne, dignified, back in control. He held up a hand like a traffic cop. "Let's don't get off on the wrong foot, tall one. Peace in the valley, man. I brought you here for two reasons, first one bein' I gotta thank you."
"Thank me for what?"
"Nothin' happens Delavon don't know about. He know what you done for Jeweldean. Today and other times. Hey. I gotta get you to sign my guest book." He spoke to one of the houris.
" Kenyatta."
The woman, whose outfit was mostly yellow, rose without using her hands, like a dancer, and walked to a small table of white rock or concrete shaped like an Ionic column. On the table was a book covered with green leather. Kenyatta beckoned.
Skip stood her ground.
"Go on," said Delavon.
Kenyatta offered her a pen and a clean page.
"Every celebrity get their own page," said Delavon. "Can't have you knowin' what other white po-lice been here; now can I?"
"I don't feel like playing games right now."
"Aw, go on. Do it for Delavon. Maybe I do somethin' for you someday."
"Maybe you will." Skip signed "Scarlett O'Hara," and turned back to Delavon. "What's the other reason?"
"You tell Delavon."
"I'm gettin' lost here. If you brought me here for two reasons, you must know what they are."
He leaned forward and touched his chest, a wronged man. "I just want to help you, that's all. Just want to he'p you. You tell me what I can do for you, I do it."
Suddenly, she realized she could say "Find Dennis Foucher," and he would. But she'd owe him for the rest of her life.
"Why would you help me?" she said.
"I been hearin' 'bout you. I know who you are."
It was possible. With more than four hundred murders a year, and thirty-five detectives to work them, Skip ended up with about fifteen cases a year. Most of them invo
lved drugs; many, teenagers. Any or all of them might involve Delavon's gangsters—or his friends or sons; maybe his enemies. He could have heard of her.
"What have you heard?" she said.
"I heard you treat people nice. With respect."
"I try to."
"And I heard you he'p out Jeweldean now and then."
"So you want to do me a favor."
"Tha's what I said, idn't it?"
She felt silly, standing in her linen slacks and T-shirt like a supplicant before a king. She wanted to regain control. "Okay. Come on down to headquarters with me."
He slapped his chair arm hard. "I tol' you not to mess with me!"
Good. He'd lost it again. She struggled to hold back a grin. "I'm not messin' with you. I thought you wanted to help."
"You got somep'n to ax Delavon, you ax him here."
"You know a guy named Dennis Foucher?"
"I know Dennis."
"I'm wondering if you've seen him in the last few days. Or heard from him."
"He was in a shootout, now wadn't he?"
"That I can't say. Maybe you know."
"Nooooo. Delavon don't know nothin' 'bout that. Don't know nothin' 'bout that."
"Have you seen him, Delavon?"
"No, sir, Delavon hadn't seen 'im. And why hadn't I seen 'im? 'Cause Dennis prob'ly be needin' some illegal drugs, that's why. And Delavon don't fool with that shit."
Right. You probably run an orphanage.
"I know that Dennis Foucher. He a hard-core heroin addict. I know what they like. They get clean, then they want that sweetness back; they want them lovin' arms aroun' 'em jus' like it used to be. But you know what? It never is like it used to be. He gon' cop some dope, he gon' decide somethin' wrong with the quality, he gon' complain; he gon' make life miserable for somebody. But then he gon' buy some more shit, 'cause he gotta have that feelin' like bein' wrapped in cotton candy. Warm spun sugar, man."
Delavon was staring into space, carried away with his own poetry, probably seeing it in Old English script on a thick white page, one of many, bound in red leather.
"Sounds like you know a lot about it."
"Delavon know these assholes. Look at me. I'm tryin' to make things better for people. People come to Delavon, I do 'em favors. They think I be involved in illegal activities, but tha's not who Delavon is. I made some good investments, I got some money, and I know things. Right now I know the man your boy makin' miserable. He be Turan."